Conventional recording mediums used for audio devices have a recording capacity for around 80 minutes of audio data. However, as the recording capacity of recording mediums has been increased, audio data has been able to be recorded for longer time than before. In addition, since prices of recording mediums have been lowered, the users have been able to use recording mediums which have a large recording capacity at low prices. Among these recording mediums, a hard disk drive (hereinafter abbreviates as HDD) is the most attractive recording medium because of a large recording capacity and a low price.
Since the HDD can store much more albums than the conventional recording mediums, it is difficult for the user to know the location of his or her desired album/track in the HDD at once. To solve such a problem, a reproducing device which can search a large number of albums/tracks stored in a HDD for use's desired album/track using a name of the album/track name and an artist name thereof at high speed has been proposed.
When albums/tracks are searched using an artist name on such a reproducing device, so many album names or track names may be output. Thus, they may not be displayed on a screen at a time. In this case, the user should search these album names or track names for his or her desired album name or track name while scrolling the screen. Thus, it is troublesome for the user to search for his or her desired album or track.
In addition, since data is searched using only characters, not in an intuitive manner, it takes a long time to search for user's desired album or track.
In addition, when a large number of albums/tracks have been recorded in the HDD, the user often has a difficulty to know his or her desired album name or track name (music title). As a result, it was difficult for the user to do that.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to provide a searching apparatus and a searching method which allows the user to easily search for his or her desired album or track.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a searching apparatus and a searching method which allow the user to intuitively search for his or her desired album or track.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a searching apparatus and a searching method which allow the user to easily search for his or her desired album and track without need to know their names.